S096 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on December 29, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: run-ins with the Blessed Virgin Mary, hanging on to pre-Vatican II stuff, adopt-a-nun, how to know and respond when God is calling, and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I’m not Catholic but have had a few run-ins with the Blessed Virgin Mary. What could this possibly mean?
• Is it wrong to hang onto pre-Vatican II understandings and expressions of the faith? Of religious life?
• I’d love to spiritually adopt a nun. How to I go about doing so?
• How do you know if God is calling you to something, and what can you do about it?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from which you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Photo by eye2eye

But this debate was incredible! I couldn’t stop listening. The four debaters included the great great grandson of Charles Darwin, a prominent rabbi in California, a philosophy professor and author, and a college president and former policy analyst in the Reagan administration.

One of the first statements I heard was that this wasn’t a debate about the existence of God or the rationality or irrationality of faith, but about the human-made phenomenon of religion. Context is soooo important!

Here’s the link to the debate, which is on a program called Intelligence Squared.

After listening to the debate, I came away with more questions than answers regarding whether or not the world is better off without religion. But I deeply appreciate the new insights I gained on both sides of the question. Take a listen and see what you think. Would the world better off without religion?

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Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer tonight and every weekday at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live.

AS095 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on December 8, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: nature and theology of grace, renouncing things one never had, nun vows, the Trinity as two men and a hen?, my church NO my church!, and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What exactly is grace? Is it like The Force or getting a shot of Red Bull?
• How does grace lead to freedom?
• Two men and a hen — A new image for the Trinity?
• Can a person renounce something if they’ve never had it? e.g., can I give up sex if I’ve never even had a romantic relationship?
• Aren’t the vows about renouncing things?
• Whose church is it, anyway? Is the Church my church, your church, God’s church, or our church?
• A Sister is interviewed on CBS News regarding the Apostolic Visitation and sisters’ responses

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/ and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS088 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on October 13, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Sister Godmother, faithful-or not-to the magisterium, tithing when the collection plate passes you by, what it means to embrace a vocation.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Can a nun be a godmother, and vice versa?
• I’ve heard the phrase “faithful to the magisterium.” What does it mean to be faithful–or not–to the magisterium? If not, is that a fast-track to excommunication?
• Is it okay to give my weekly church donation to other charitable organizations? Is it still considered tithing to the church?
• How does a person embrace a vocation?

Do you have a question for us? Using your computer, record your question on voice mail. It’s easy to do! Just click this Record link to get started! Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS079 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on July 21, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: bible books aplenty, dropping “sisters” from liturgical language, control freaks and God, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!
Here are some of the questions we address in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I came across an older bible recently. It has more books than one I recently bought, e.g. the book of Enoch. Why are these bibles different?
• Do you find yourself allowing God to direct your ministry and life or do you need complete control over such matters?
• Why do some churches omit “and sisters” from parts of the Mass such as the penitential rite which says, “and you, my brothers and sisters”?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

On this holy feast day of Pentecost, we have a guest blog post from our friend,
Regina Snyder Heater.

I don’t know about you, but the Holy Spirit was not given much time in my faith formation. The emphasis was on Jesus, and if you read the Creeds and the prayers of the Christian tradition, you’ll see there is precious little devoted to the enigmatic Holy Spirit (there are more mentions of Mary than the Spirit in our Common Prayers listed in the Compendium.) Even during my theological studies, the Spirit was not given much mention. (For example, it was only last year that I learned what a Paraclete is.)  It seems we only devote out attention to the Holy Spirit when it’s Pentecost and Confirmation (time to sing Veni, Sanctus Spiritus unless your choir/orchestra is up to O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe, BWV 34, (O eternal fire, o source of love) a glorious cantata by Bach).

There’s even confusion about whether the Spirit is Spirit or a Ghost, a She or a He or an It.  Perhaps it’s because the Spirit scares us, with wind and tongues of fire and promises of visions, which our mystical counterparts like Hildegard embraced with abandon, yet are frankly a little scary, at least in my mind.  And yet Hildegard really seemed to “get” the Holy Spirit, to the point that it makes me a little sad to think my own inhibitions perhaps get in the way of experiencing all that the Spirit offers to me in Christ.

In John 14, Jesus tell us “the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit whom Abba God will send in my name, will instruct you in everything and she will remind you of all that I told you.”  The Greek word used here, parakletas, means “one called to the side of” which is why this is also translated as Advocate and Counselor.  It’s interesting to me that the Holy Spirit is both called and sent. We can call upon the Holy Spirit to assist us in whatever we are facing, so that we might be animated and sanctified, that we might build the Church.   If we live in the Spirit – if we live an animated life – we will not only see visions of a world where the Kin-dom of God exists in the present, we will also know the Fruits of the Spirit: love (charity), joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness and self-control.  Those are things I want in my life, and so I will sing with our friend Hildegard and all Christians on Pentecost:

Come Holy Spirit, creator, come/from your bright heavenly throne/come take possession of our souls/and make them all your own…

Other great contributions from Hildegard about the Holy Spirit:

You are called Comforter,
gift of the highest God,
found of life, fire, love,
and spiritual unction.

Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit, bestowing life unto life,
moving in All.
You are the root of all creatures,
washing away all impurity,
scouring guilt,
and anointing wounds.
Thus you are luminous and praiseworthy, Life,
awakening, and re-awakening all that is.

Today I graduate from Catholic Theological Union. I’m looking forward to the ceremony, which will be held in a beautiful historical synagogue that’s across the street from President Obama’s house in Hyde Park, close to downtown Chicago.

The students from CTU (ctu.edu) come from all over the world. In the opening procession, each country is represented by a flag. It reminds me of the conversations I had with people from China, Korea, Thailand, South Africa, Ireland, India, and many other places around the globe. The conversations broadened my understanding of God and of the church and deeply enriched my faith.

Blessings and prayers to the graduates of CTU and to all other students who will graduate from high schools and colleges this month!

If there are special graduates in your life, please write their first names in the comment box below. We’ll bring all the names into prayer as a litany on Friday’s “Praying with the Sisters” podcast.

AS056 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 14, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Benedictine monastics outside the monastery, godly anger, church-going dilemma for a Catholic-Protestant couple, not feeling called, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I feel I have a vocation but recently I’ve felt “not called” anymore. Should I be worried?
• How can Benedictines be considered monastics when so many of them work in the world? … Sister Christine Ereiser, OSB, responds
• What would cause God to be angry with us? (from a discussion about Meribah)
• Is it okay to be angry with God?
• What are some healthy ways for a couple to attend church when one is Catholic and one is Protestant?
• Plus, an update from the “nun-ordering-pizza” debate!

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

On Christmas Eve, I went to mass with my family in the small town where my mom lives. There was only one mass, at 4:00 p.m.—the children’s mass. It was action-packed, and I had a great time! Throughout mass, children were singing at random, laughing, crying, shouting, and springing up and down. Miraculously, the baby in the pew in front of me slept the entire time.

After church, I visited with cousins, who told stories about children’s masses they attended in other towns. My favorite story was about a children’s mass that included a visit from Santa. The church was in a small city, and the pews were packed. It was uncertain when the mass actually began because the children’s voices drowned out the sound system. Suddenly a hush fell over the crowd. There, walking up the main aisle, was Santa Claus.

I can imagine the shock. I’ve never seen Santa at mass. Santa is a kind and generous soul, but the church-going type? Not so much.

Anyway, Santa strolled up to the nativity scene at the front of the church. Then Santa knelt down before the Baby Jesus and new parents. In the twinkle of an eye, Santa rose and headed out the side door. For about two seconds, said my cousin, “you coulda heard a pin drop in there. After that, the place went wild.”

I love that story because it addresses one of the great childhood mysteries –the relationship between Jesus and Santa Claus. To me, the relationship is about the spirit of generosity and being present to one another.

We’d like to hear your stories of Children’s masses!  Share them in the comment box below or on our Facebook page!

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via our live podcast “Praying with the Sisters” and chat room. Just before 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) join us at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE … more info on that page.

AS047 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on November 5, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Trent and Second Vatican Council, growing in understanding God, a devil for loving, joining a religious community in another country and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the questions we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I’m a guy in love and want to go out with girl who wants to be a nun, does that mean like I’m the devil or something?
• Is it possible for someone discerning to be a nun to join a religious community in another country? How would this work?
• Could you describe the Council of Trent in a nutshell and how it affected the church?
• What do you think was the greatest positive impact that the Second Vatican Council had on the church?
• What do you know now about God that you wish you’d known in the beginning?
• What are somethings to consider before making a big life decision?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS046 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on October 29, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: mother superiors, nun rings, sin and voting, solitude v. loneliness, called to be a nun, prayer and having a Mass said for someone, and more.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the questions we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Who determines who will be the leader (sometimes called the President or Mother Superior) of a religious congregation?
• Did Saint Francis of Assisi wear a wedding ring?
• Can religious leaders attempt to influence voters by suggesting that voting for or against someone is “sinful”?
• From a spiritual point of view, what is the difference between solitude and loneliness?
• How do I know if I’m called to be a nun?
• Did religious life change in the past 30 years?
• Does your prayer change as you progress in religious life?
• Can a person from one country join a religious community from another country?
• What does it mean when a person asks you to say a Mass or have a Mass said for someone who is living or has died?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

I found an interesting article and video from Faith and Leadership (out of Duke University) featuring the great scripture scholar N.T. Wright, former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He offers the metaphor of a building in order to understand the institution of church and the community of church.

Take a look at the video and article see what insights and questions come to mind.

VIDEO:

ARTICLE:
N.T. Wright: Working on a building (Faith and Leadership website)
Institutions are essential to the church’s mission, but they are not reality, Wright says. They are merely the scaffolding and plumbing that make possible the building called community.

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via our live podcast “Praying with the Sisters” and chat room. Just before 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) join us at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE … more info on that page.

AS030 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on June 18, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: cultivating patience, personal opinion v. official church stance, right- and left-brain discernment, entering novitiate, and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the questions we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• How do I become a better “patience person”?
• What does a believer do when personal opinion on a “hot topic” issue (like women priests, abortion, gay and lesbian issues, immigration) differs from the official church stance? Can a believer have a different view and still be Roman Catholic?
• Can we turn our backs on people who are gay or lesbian?
• Is discernment a right-brained or left-brained activity?
• What might my first year of novitiate look like?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an interesting op-ed piece called Who Can Mock This Church? (New York Times, May 1, 2010).

It’s a tough read in the sense that he makes some rather pointed statements about the church’s sex abuse scandals and a church teaching or two. But, his message is that those who wish to “sniff derisively” at the church as a whole ought to first take a look at the “brave souls” who work tirelessly, and many times in very dangerous situations, to live truly the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Among the fine examples is Sister Cathy Arata, a nun from New Jersey. Kristof writes:

Photo by Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times. Sister Cathy Arata, a nun from New Jersey who now works with a Catholic project called Solidarity With Southern Sudan.

In the city of Juba, I met Cathy Arata, a nun from New Jersey who spent years working with battered women in Appalachia. Then she moved to El Salvador during the brutal civil war there, putting her life on the line to protect peasants. Two years ago, she came here on behalf of a terrific Catholic project called Solidarity With Southern Sudan.

Sister Cathy and the others in the project have trained 600 schoolteachers. They are fighting hunger not with handouts but with help for villagers to improve agricultural techniques. They are also establishing a school for health workers, with a special focus on midwifery to reduce deaths in childbirth.

At the hospital attached to that school, the surgeon is a nun from Italy. The other doctor is a 72-year-old nun from Rhode Island. Nuns rock.

Sister Cathy would like to see more decentralization in the church, a greater role for women, and more emphasis on public service. She says she worries sometimes that if Jesus returned he would say, “Oh, they got it all wrong!”

She would make a great pope, too.

Check out the full article and let us know what you think. What challenges you about the article? What insights popped into your mind?

My friend Michael, a seminarian and a pre-novice in formation with the Augustinians, has written an open letter to seminarians addressing the ongoing revelations of sexual abuse of minors by members of the Catholic clergy. I encourage you to read the letter on his blog Psalm 46:11: A Journey to Truth.

This is a very tough topic and a terrible experience for the people who have suffered this abuse. It has also stirred much sadness and anger as well as outpourings of prayer and compassion. With Michael, we stand in prayerful solidarity with those suffering and we stand in direct opposition to their abusers and those who egregiously mishandled these situations. We must do everything in our power to protect children and to see that this does not happen ever again.

With the swirl of voices out there on this topic, Michael’s perspective on this is unique because he is a seminarian, someone who is in the process of becoming a priest. It is a difficult time for seminarians as well who are trying to come to terms with what is happening among their brother seminarians and clergy and with their own call to serve as priests. While intensely conscious of the wrongs committed and great suffering involved, Michael’s words are a voice of hope in the church.

I join Michael in his prayer request:

I would ask that you find it in your heart to pray for all seminarians and priests in the Church today, so that we might live in true integrity to our vocations as priests, so that we might truly be holy and humble priests, so that we might become part of the process of healing that our Church so desperately needs

What is your voice of hope? What is your prayer?

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Join the sisters for evening prayer tonight at 6 p.m. Central Time and every Monday through Thursday at http://anunslife.org/live

AS018 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 19, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: a discerner’s IHM experience, why Catholic sisters support health care reform, Bible translations, common misperceptions about nuns, and more.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the questions we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What was Sue’s experience visiting the IHM Motherhouse? What was it like to pray and working with the sisters?
• What Bible version do you use for your prayer podcasts?
• What are some common misconceptions that you encounter about nuns and sisters?
• Why are U.S. Catholic sisters supporting the Senate bill on health care?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below.

As a celibate, non-sex-having, vocationally-engaged person, I was intrigued by and a bit apprehensive of an article by Jamie Manson entitled Celibacy: Neither healthy nor helpful for the future of vocations in National Catholic Reporter (March 11, 2010).

Although Manson states somewhat parenthentically that she is “not suggesting that celibacy is wrong or unhealthy” and that “for some individuals, this choice is very life-giving”, I get the distinct impression from the entire article that such a choice would be fundamentally against the very nature of “today’s young adults”. Hmmm.

At the old age of 38 and a member of that old-fashioned Generation X, you can take my two cents for what they’re worth. First I concur 100% with the universal call to holiness. There is no such thing as a “higher” calling. You can slap the label “consecrated” or “ordained” or whatever on the calling but it’s still not any better or worse than any other calling. However God calls you is what is most fulfilling for you. True, we still have many remnants of pre-Vatican II ideas and those continue to affect how people understand their own calling and that of others.

I feel badly that Manson and others continue to experience an undervaluing of their desire for a “healthy, loving, committed sexual relationship” and their desire to devote their lives “to the service of the gospel”. But I don’t think changing a recognition of the value of celibacy in consecrated life is going to change that. I think that the problem is that the church (magisterium and people of God) hasn’t yet fully committed to the idea of the universal call to holiness. Even Manson herself seems to feel that the only way that people can be recognized as seeking “a healthy, loving, committed sexual relationship” and “being fully and authentically committed to bringing the life of God into the world” is through consecrated life. Otherwise, why the concern about being “banned” from consecrated life?

I guess I’m confused a bit (which happens at the old age of 38) because I fundamentally agree with Manson about vocation and calling, but there are so many negative celibacy over- and undertones in the article that I’m left wondering (a) if she really understands celibacy (celibacy is a far richer concept and experience than simply not being involved in a sexual relationship) and (b) what she’s really trying to say. Is it that religious life, consecrated virginity, the eremetical life, and other forms of consecrated virginity should lift the celibacy requirement?  Is it that there should be an additional form of consecrated life that recognizes the value of sexual relationships? Is it that the church still has a long way to go in truly promulgating the universal call to holiness? Is it that celibacy is fundamentally unnatural for young people today and into the future? Is it that celibacy’s only value is for the quirky few who find it life giving?

Well, those are a few thoughts from one quirky Gen X-er. What do you think?

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Join two celibate women and others for prayer tonight at 6 p.m. Central Daylight Time at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE (note: due to Daylight Saving Time our broadcast has shifted to UTC-5)

Some of the most incredible architecture can be found among churches. Two of my favorite books are about the construction of churches: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter’s by R.A. Scotti. I find fascinating both the actual process of building and all the theology that is literally and figuratively built into churches.

Wikipedia notes that church architecture (a.k.a. ecclesiastical architecture) “has evolved over the two thousand years of the Christian religion, partly by innovation and partly by imitating other architectural styles as well as responding to changing beliefs, practices and local traditions. Christian architecture encompasses a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the foundation of Christianity to the present day, influencing the design and construction of buildings and structures in Christian culture. From the birth of Christianity to the present, the most significant period of transformation for Christian architecture and design was the Gothic cathedral.”

Architects can get pretty creative when designing churches. Here is one of my faves from the post 10 Most Unique Churches in the World by Holly Sendy.

The Chapel of Saint Gildas is found upon the bank of the Canal du Blavet in Brittany, France. It is built into the base of a rocky cliff. This was once a holy place for the Druids in AD 540 where Gildas preached Christianity to the people. There are some cool pictures of the exterior and interior of this church at the blog Breizh Bretagne Llydaw Brittany including the one below.

I love how this chapel is tucked right into the earth. It speaks to me of the incarnation, of faith being born right out of the stuff of God’s good creation.

Where have you come across stunning or unusual church architecture? What does it say to you about God?

My dear friend and IHM Sister Margaret Brennan recently published her memoir, What Was There for Me Once (2009 Novalis) and last week National Catholic Reporter published a review of the book called “A life of change and renewal” (February 19, 2010).

In Sister Margaret’s book, we find not just a memoir but a compelling and insightful story. Kilian McDonnell, OSB, remarks, “Here is a story of a young girl, sister, novice mistress, elementary and high school teacher, president of the congregation, and university professor in the midst of rapid social change.” Sister Margaret “had a major part to play in developing women’s religious, academic, and spiritual lives in the second half of the 20th century.”

Here are a few quotes from NCR’s review of the book:

This preconciliar church experience was fulfilling and made sense to her — and she embraced it. Of religious life as it approached Vatican II, she writes: “While I was entirely happy in the traditional model of religious life as it had been lived for hundreds of years, I was open to the coming changes.”

The Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary were among those religious who were quick to internalize the Vatican documents and the new theologians appearing on the scene. “To use the framework of [Jesuit theologian] Bernard Lonergan, I would say that for me the change from the traditional model of religious life to the Vatican II model was a process of conversion. In involved a real change in worldview, in horizon.”

“To keep the question of God — and God’s questions — high on the horizon of the world is worth the gifts of our lives,” Brennan says. And, without a doubt, her memoir attests to this purpose.

There are many things I love about this book — most especially to hear the voice of one of my sisters, one who was instrumental in my own vocation and religious life. I also love the way she writes with grace and a confidence in the providence of God. Sister Margaret also fills a huge gap in the Catholic and popular imagination about nuns and sisters. Kilian McDonnell notes this well writing that the book takes us through “the passage typical of many women’s religious apostolic communities from monastic models to religious forms more in keeping with their original active charism.”

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Join us for prayer this evening during our live Praying with the Sisters podcast at 6 p.m. CST at http://aNunsLife.org/live .

The National Catholic Reporter has a new article posted by Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, called Discerning Ministerial Religious Life Today (September 11, 2009). In this article, Sister Sandra helps explain why it is that all nuns do not wear a habit, live in a cloister, or pray the horarium. Essentially Sister Sandra is filling a gap in people’s experience of women religious. Many people have had experience of or heard about sisters who live a monastic form of religious life and sisters who live an apostolic or ministerial form of religious life. But it’s not always easy to explain how we got the two or how the two are similar and how they are dissimilar.

This essay is also a kind of continuation of a discussion on religious life by Sister Sandra in recent publications: the essay Why they stay(ed), the personal email that NCR published, We’ve given birth to a new form of religious life, and the address she gave to the IHM Congregation, God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009.

In this latest piece, Sister Sandra, a member of my own IHM community, responds to the question, What is ‘apostolic Religious Life’? which, as she notes, has been answered though often times with misinformation. The question appears in various forms, often around three main questions about lifestyle:

“Is culturally conspicuous, uniform garb (habit), fixed group dwelling from which members exit only by necessity and from which non-members are excluded (enclosure, cloister), and a daily schedule including shared meals, work, and especially the oral recitation of prescribed texts and vocal prayers, e.g., divine office, litanies, at several fixed times a day (horarium) essential to Catholic Religious Life as such?” The short answer is “no.”

The article goes on to provide a longer answer contextualized within history, scripture and theology.

This is a very important piece of writing and I recommend that you take a read, especially if you are considering religious life or know someone who is. Use it as a starting point to explore some of the issues and insights that Sister Sandra has raised. Whether or not you agree with what she has written, she has done a good job at naming the significant issues that can create confusion and misinformation.

Discerning Ministerial Religious Life Today
(National Catholic Reporter, September 11, 2009)

Please read the article and then join in the conversation below. (NB: The conversation actually got started on another post here so I moved those comment over here.)

Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, has made public an important paper on Ministerial Religious Life. In the paper God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009 Sister Sandra describes what Apostolic Religious Life is and how it is evolving (or has evolved) into what she has called Ministerial Religious Life.

Here’s my very brief outline of the paper — any inaccuracies here are mine and not Sister Sandra’s. It’s meant only to give you a sense of the topics in the paper and to encourage you to read the full paper. You really don’t want to miss it if you are at all interested in Religious Life.

Sister Sandra looks at the origins of Apostolic Religious Life (which “has had official canonical recognition since 1900 and existed for centuries before that”) and situates it both canonically (what does Canon Law say about this form of consecrated life) and ecclesiastically (how does Apostolic Religious Life as a lifeform fit within the structure of the Church).

She shows how the Apostolic Religious Life that is being lived today is still authentically religious life and at the same time “involves some very significant discontinuities with earlier understandings of enough of the constitutive dimensions of that life that it is really a new form in relation to traditional apostolic Congregations.” Two important aspects of this evolution are what Sister Sandra calls “the end of Religious Life as Total Institution” and the simultaneous “ministerial turn”. She looks at how both of these have affected our understanding and living out of the vows, community life, ministry, and public witness.

Once Sister Sandra has set the context she goes on to asks, “What has brought about this development and how do we interpret, evaluate, and appropriate it?” What follows is an excellent piece on the impact of the Second Vatican Council on Religious Life. She notes how “most Religious Congregations of women, especially in the developed world, did not read Perfectae Caritatis in isolation, as a kind of self-sufficient magna carta for renewal. They read it through the lenses of Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes.” Note: Perfectae Caritatis is the document on the renewal of Religious Life; Lumen Gentium is the document on the Church affirming the universal call to holiness of all the baptized; and Guadium et Spes is the document on the Church in the modern world.

Sister Sandra then looks at the development of a new theology of world and the development of a new spirituality of world as a result of the shifts and the ongoing urgings of the Holy Spirit. Finally, she articulates some of the implications of these developments for vowed Religious Life.

Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, is one of my nuns and a leader in the study of religious life and of biblical spirituality. This talk was originally presented at our IHM Motherhouse for the Sisters and Associates of my community.

Read God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009 and let’s get a discussion going about this. It’s an excellent paper, a good read, and definitely worth reflecting on.